As Tom Keating mentioned earlier today we are proud to announce that Internet Telephony Conference & Expo which will take place in just under a week in Miami Florida has registrations from 74 countries, a 15.6% increase over last year.

The show takes place January 23-25 and I hope you can make it.

As cold weather comes to many parts of the world, now is a good time to come to ITEXPO where you can enjoy the heat of the red-hot IP communications industry and a bit of sun as well.

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to interview a number of thought leaders and others who have given me their perspectives on the communications market, the future, the entry of Google, Apple and Microsoft into the space and much more.

Here are some of the more interesting interviews for your reading pleasure... I really think we can get a healthy read on where communications will be headed in 2008 by absorbing some of these comments.

It has been a pretty big news day so far this early morning. Intel perhaps is responsible for the biggest portion of today's market movement as last night they announced earnings which were not all that bad but the stock got slammed anyway. I am a shareholder of Intel as a point of disclosure.

Ending a six-month long saga many thought was over, Oracle will be buying BEA Systems for 8.5 billion dollars in an all-cash deal. You may recall this summer that the two companies were negotiating over this sale with BEA rejecting an earlier offer from the database and software giant.

The Wall Street Journal has good financial analysis of Synchronoss Technology, the company behind the iPhone activation.

On November 6, 2007 I had a post (see bottom of post for chart) where I showed how TMC compares with other IP Communications sites. I did this by pulling numbers from Quantcast, a web service which tracks web traffic worldwide but whose numbers quoted here equal the unique United States visitors each month.

So a Quantcast ranking of 3,000 means that you have 100 unique visitors each day per month (approximately 30 days). So 100 x 30 = 3,000. Again -- these are US numbers only.

In November of last year, TMCnet attracted just over 711,000 US unique visitors per month according to Quantcast.

Now, just two months later, our Quantcast ranking is 870,019, an increase of 159,019.

The bad news keeps flowing for Sprint employees as there are now rumored layoffs coming. Still, with a new CEO, this news is not too surprising. Moreover, for shareholders these cuts will likely be welcomed as sales are slowing and churn is increasing. Sprint desperately needs to do something to make their company and service sexy.

Service providers are being extremely creative in using technology and ingenuity to launch new and enhanced services and products to keep customers and attract new ones. Some of the better ideas I have seen lately are the consumer electronics DECT phone fromComcast which allows internet browsing and address synchronization via the in-home cordless phone.

I also think the Alltel/AAA collaboration is a great move allowing consumers access to over 100,000 locations which give AAA discounts. In addition the GPS-enabled devices allow instant transmission of location to AAA when you have a car problem.

Another great idea is the transmission of Pandora radio to certain AT&T Wireless handsets. I really like Pandora as the service allows you to customize your own radio stations without listening to commercials.